Sinvertek MGAT-1 EVO Great Era Edition

The Sinvertek MGAT-1 EVO Great Era Edition is a Marshall-style preamp pedal, a distortion pedal built as a full amp circuit in pedal format rather than a simple clipping stage. It is the third variant of Sinvertek's MGAT-1 line, following the original MGAT-1 (2022) and the MGAT-1 Golden Era (2023), and it covers five key Marshall amps in one box: the JTM45, the SLP Super Lead 100W, the JCM800, the JCM2000 and the JVM¹². It is a single-channel output, so you pick your voicing and work from there rather than switching between footswitchable channels¹.

The Great Era Edition is a limited run of 79 units, finished with gold accents; a second limited-run colorway, the red, white and blue Abstractionism edition, shipped alongside it¹. The reviewer at Guitar Pedal X received serial number 12 of 79 and paid $369 plus $20 shipping, with a UK customs and import charge of £44.60 (about $61) bringing his total to roughly $450¹.

A Marshall-in-a-box preamp covering five amps

The MGAT-1 line grew out of Sinvertek's N5 series of distortion pedals, which began with the Sinvertek No.5 Distortion in 2015; the MGAT-1 Hyper Preamp was the fifth major iteration of that platform, arriving in Marshall's 60th anniversary year of 2022 as a homage to six decades of Marshall amps⁴. Guitar Pedal X described it as "a full amp circuit in pedal format, with 14 controls, three channels and 19 gain tones from clean to ultra-gain"⁴, and Delicious Audio noted that the MGAT-1 "can provide 19 different gain tone, covering from clean to ultra-gain"⁵.

Where the original MGAT-1 spread itself across the whole Marshall story, the Golden Era narrowed its focus to three specific heads: the 1987X, the 1959 SLP and the 2203 JCM800⁶. The EVO goes back the other way, covering five amps from the JTM45 through to the modern JVM¹. For a player, that means one pedal can sit in for anything from a mid-1960s bluesbreaker voice to a high-gain modern head.

Guitar Pedal X's reviewer, who owns 70 to 80 Marshall-in-a-box pedals, placed the EVO at the top of that collection, calling it "the best of the bunch in terms of its core amp flavour, dynamics, and range"¹. A second player quoted in the same review, Michael Aschoff, compared the EVO's JCM800 voicing against the JCM800 model in the Axe-Fx III and found the pedal came out ahead¹.

The controls and switches

The EVO carries the control set established across the MGAT-1 line, which has run 14 controls since the original². The knobs named in the EVO review are GAIN, VOLUME, PRESENCE, TREBLE and MID, alongside a Gain Structure switch with three positions¹.

Delicious Audio's buying guide describes the MGAT-1 platform as integrating "two gain and 4 EQ knobs... by switches offering 4 tone and 4 gain options, delivering hundreds of sonic possibilities," all hand-wired⁷. The practical takeaway is that the switches multiply what the knobs alone can do, so the same knob settings can yield very different feels depending on switch position.

Versions and limited runs

Sinvertek's MGAT-1 history is a chain of small, handmade limited runs, each typically ordered by email and paid via PayPal⁶³.

The Golden Era First Edition was limited to 250 units, while the DS99 was a lighter colourway edition of only 99 units, mainly reserved for regular loyal Sinvertek customers⁶. All of these pedals are handmade by Mr Wu, with Golden Era units typically shipping from California and the DS99 taking about six weeks to make and deliver⁶. Sinvertek later extended the platform away from Marshall entirely with the MGAT-5 SRAA, a Real Amp Abstraction of the Soldano SLO-100⁹.

Golden Era versus EVO

The MGAT-1 Golden Era was itself an improvement on the original MGAT-1, and Guitar Pedal X frames the EVO as a further step: "we got the even better MGAT-1 Golden Era, and now we have the still better MGAT-1 EVO"¹. The Golden Era targeted three amps and claimed up to 99% similarity to the original Marshall amp across guitar volume, gain and volume settings⁶; the EVO widens the coverage to five amps while keeping a single-channel output¹. In a 2025 buying guide, Guitar Pedal X called the MGAT-1 Golden Era "a magnificent 14-controls long-term favourite that has the highest gain range here and most shaping ability," while noting it is single-channel only⁸. The original MGAT-1 took Gold in the site's 2024 distortion roundup at $350¹⁰.

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